Various techniques exist for diagnosing the behavior of program resources running on computing devices, such as stationary personal computers. In one such known approach, a personal computer may generate a failure report whenever this device encounters anomalies in the execution of a program. The personal computer can then forward this failure report to an online service via a hardwired wideband connection. For example, the failure report can contain stack trace information or the like. Such a report may be relatively large in size. Upon receipt, the online service may compare the failure report against the signatures of known failure modes. If the online service is able to diagnose a failure, it can take corrective action, such as by downloading a program patch to the effected personal computer. Other personal computers behave in the same manner, e.g., by generating and transmitting failure reports which convey the same type of information to the online service.
The above approach, however, may not be fully feasible when applied to the case in which the computing devices represent mobile devices, such as mobile telephones and the like having limited resources.